The Universal Sigh

To promote the CD and vinyl release of The King of Limbs, Radiohead distributed a single-issue free newspaper, The Universal Sigh, at locations across the world on 28 March 2011. It is separate from the newspaper that accompanies the Newspaper Album version of The King of Limbs; artist Stanley Donwood describes it as “a 12-page tabloid, printed using web-offset lithography on newsprint paper, just like the LA Weekly or London Lite or The Daily Mail”. It features artwork, poetry, and lyrics, and short stories by Stanley Donwood, Jay Griffiths and Robert Macfarlane. The free newspaper concept came from Donwood witnessing “a seething mass of humanity that I’d been embroiled in at the top of the steps down to Oxford Circus tube station, where amongst the heaving throng of commuters were valiant distributors of London Lite and Metro and the Standard, attempting to hand them out.”

These videos are from inkybrown, which you should remember from this post about the Seasonal Release theory. She was kind enough to record the following 11 videos to help with this post. She narrates the stories for everyone here: